6 Tips to Improve Windows 10 Mobile Phone Battery Life

Since long, I was struggling with Windows 10 Mobile Lumia 950 XL battery life. My Windows phone Microsoft Lumia 950 XL battery running from 100% to 30% in 3 hours with average use. Microsoft Lumia 950 XL is none other than Microsoft’s flagship device. 3340mAh battery drains this fast which is unbelievable. The highlights of this device are Windows 10 Mobile OS, 20 Mega Pixel main camera, Free Display dock, 5.7 Inch display, 3340 mAh battery. I’ve latest firmware running on the phone with latest operating system bytes. I’m not part of insider builds. First tip to increase the battery charge life would be to close all the opened applications in your Windows 10 phone. Press and hold back arrow key in the Windows 10 phone to see already opened applications. See, the following screen capture…

All these tips and settings (to improve the battery life of Windows 10 Phone) are tested with my Microsoft Lumia 950 XL for a week and I’m very happy with the results !!

Another very important tip to improve the battery charge of Windows 10 phone is to do some optimization in the battery saver (Settings –> system) settings. This will show you remaining battery level and estimated battery remaining time for Windows 10 Phone. I’ve set Windows 10 Phone battery server to be ON when the battery falls below 40% of the charge. I know that is bit high but it gives me more easy life 🙂 I would recommend battery saver value as 40% it won’t give any adverse impact other than every time you have to press Dismiss button on the critical battery warning message. The default value of Windows 10 Phone battery saver is 20%.

Also, I didn’t keep any applications in the allowed list to run in the background when the battery saver is ON. That is again makes sense for me (to improve the battery charge of Windows 10 phone ) as it won’t get your applications down. Whenever you open your Mail, WhatsApp, Message etc…, it will give get synced. So I’m happy with these settings after 1 weeks of Windows 10 Phone usage.

This is another important tip to improve the battery charge of Windows 10 phone. When you open Windows 10 phone (Lumia 950 XL) Battery Usage (via Settings –> System –> Battery Saver –> Battery Use) then you can see Change Background app Settings. Also, you would be able to see other details of Windows 10 mobile (L 950 XL) battery usage in the battery usage section. In my scenario, System uses 21 %, Display uses 67.8% of battery (as expected most used). Another important measurement here is background applications use 7.8% battery even after I disallowed all the all apps not to run in the background. So think about if all the applications are allowed to run in the background then Lumia 950XL background apps battery usage will shoot up to 4 times of (7.8%) = 32 %.

As mentioned in the above section, to disallow all the apps from running in the background improved Windows 10 Mobile Lumia 950 XL battery charge life exponentially. Navigate to Settings –> System –> Battery Saver –> Battery Use > Change Background Apps Settings and disallow all the apps from running in the background. Don’t worry that your applications won’t get synced real time (automatically). Your Mail, WhatsApp, Messages etc.. will get synced as soon as you unlock the phone. Even I have disabled the call apps also to run in the background. Trust me, this settings won’t stop you getting calls and messages !!! By default the applications are allowed to run in the background of Windows 10 phone unless you deliberately switched this off…..

Another tips to improve the battery life of Windows 10 phone is mentioned below. Navigate to Settings–> Extras -> Glance Screen mode to Off. This feature is not required for me and this can eat up loads of battery charge of Windows 10 Phone.

Also, I was part of Windows 10 Insider build (fast ring) for sometime and the battery charging was taking long time. Lumia 950 XL took more than 4 hours to get full charge. I did a reset Windows 10 Phone and used the production version of Windows 10 for mobile that helped to resolve this issue.

Anoop is Microsoft MVP and Veeam Vanguard ! He is a Solution Architect on enterprise client management with more than 17 years of experience (calculation done on the year 2018) in IT. He is Blogger, Speaker and Local User Group Community leader. His main focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM 2012,Current Branch, Intune. He writes about the technologies like SCCM, SCOM, Windows 10, Azure AD, Microsoft Intune, RMS, Hyper-V etc...

If, after a major update (major build, ie Anniversary Update or form 8.1 to 10) you have battery issues or charging issues, try a reset of the phone. Sometimes old versions of files get stuck and this conflict causes battery issues. Be aware that Windows 10 Mobile does use more battery power than Windows 8/8.1 Phone on the same device at this stage.

If you have fast battery drain, random reboot and overheating problem with any Windows phone devices this not related to Windows 10 Mobile or any build. This is just because most of the Windows Phone devices are older than a year or two so the battery is expired. Replacing the battery will fix fast battery drain, random reboot and overheating problem of Windows Phone. I had same problem, I replaced mine now I don’t have any problem. I highly recommend you to replace your battery if you have same problem .

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Hi, I’m Anoop C Nair. I’m the person behind this website. Thank you for visiting the website and about me page! My website is all about Microsoft technologies. More about ConfigMgr (a.k.a SCCM), Intune, Mobile Device Management and all other technologies which are interesting for me. Read more about me here